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why is "Rx" used for "prescription?" | Because of its latin roots, Rx means recipe: to take[From Wikipedia:] > ℞ is a symbol meaning "prescription". It is sometimes transliterated as "Rx" or just "Rx". This symbol originated in medieval manuscripts as an abbreviation of the Late Latin verb recipe, the imperative form of recipere, "to take" or "take thus". L... |
On SNL (and similar shows) how is the live audience's laughing timed with the camera cuts we're seeing at home, when they can see everything happening on stage? | There are several staging areas in studio 8H in Rockefeller center, most of the time the audience isn't straight on, meaning the soundstage isn't directly in front of them. So the only way they can watch many sketches is on the TV mounted on the walls and rails. Other times when the cut happens for the joke for the aud... |
How are GMO's created and why do they threaten the environment? | Everyone here is describing why they are safe for human consumption, and how the hippies are wrong and blah, blah, blah. But OP asked why they threaten the environment. I will make this concise as I am on my phone, but GMOs are thought to be harmful to the environment because they affect the biodiversity of an area. Pe... |
If atoms are so small that not even the most powerful microscopes can detect them, how are scientists able to experiment with them? | I bring to you a boy and his atom _URL_0_ They can see it, well visualize itThe idea was to use a "Scanning tunneling microscope", a tool that allows scientists to visualize and move individual atoms over a surface, to create a movie in stop motion._URL_2_ _URL_2_ We can see them, move them, and spell things with them.... |
What is is that actually causes you to die when severely dehydrated or starving? | They are two very different things. Water is a universal solvent and we need it for almost all of the chemical reactions of living cells. Without it, we can't perform the chemistry of living tissue and cells will start to accumulate metabolic waste and they will receive less nutrients until they begin to die. This happ... |
Why is it that problems regarding Natives are talked about much more in Canada than in the U.S? | The native population of Canada is about 5%, whereas the native population of the United States is around 2%. Additionally, since Canada has a total population of about 36 million in comparison to 330 million in the US, native people in Canada have a lot more visibility. This visibility also manifests in policy. |
How are the packets of a VPN connection get routed properly when all traffic gets routed THROUGH the VPN? | Why would it be exempt? If you look at your routing table *without* a VPN, you'll see that you have a default route that uses a default gateway . And everything works, because the traffic knows what it's destination is and your default gateway knows where to route that, even if it itself is the destination. The VPN sim... |
Why aren't race/bigotry motivated crimes committed by non-islamist groups not considered acts of terrorism by the media/general public? | Terrorism is a point a view, not an inherent fact to a situation. When the OK city bombing happened all the media rushed to say it was committed by Arab terrorists. When it was revealed to be perpetrated by a white Christian American, the reporting changed to a mad-man, a political extremist. Terrorism is used as an 'u... |
Why does cold water taste better than warm water to humans? | Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [[ELI5] Why does cold water taste so much better than room temperature or warm water? ]1. [ELI5: Why does cold water taste so much better than warm water? ]1. [ELI5: Why does hot water taste so different to cold water? ]1. [ELI5: Why does cold water taste g... |
What causes birthmarks and why doesn't everyone have them? | Birthmarks are created when there is a cluster of melanocytes- which are cells that produce melanin/skin colour. A port-wine birthmark is the cluster of blood vessels underneath the skin, which is why the birthmark is characterised as so. Not everyone has a birthmark because we are all born with different bodies, skin ... |
how come putting water on your face makes it dryer? | Your skin stays plastic due to oils in the outer layers; water can help strip those oils out of the skin, and then it all wipes off/evaporates. Same thing for licking your lips. Skin doesn't need water, it needs oil. |
How did a propeller beanie become synonymous with childish immaturity. | In short, yes. In a little longer, for a while it was in fashion for kids to have those. Probably not as in fashion as it can seem though, as the image of a grown up with the very funky-looking propeller was emotionally resonant, which made it popular. In simple terms: it looked funny so people used it. Compare with th... |
why haven't we seen the US (and its partners in the fight against ISIS) engage in a siege of Raqqah, the "de facto capital of ISIS"? | 1. Raqqa is surrounded by other territories controlled by Islamic State, so to surround it you need to fight IS on at least two fronts . 2. Any effective form of siege could have to involve cutting off food, water, or electricity, which would result in massive civilian casualties and would be a PR disaster. Remember, I... |
How do tattoo last so long if every cell in your body is replaced in 7 years? | Tattoos last forever because the human body thinks it is under attack when someone draws on it. The body’s complex processes that keep our skin free from infection are the same ones that allow ink to live forever in our skin. It should very difficult for anything to stay in the skin: humans shed about 40,000 skin cells... |
how do nav systems and Google maps know current traffic | It's user submitted information almost all of the time. Waze for example is solely based on users posting traffic conditions etc, while other apps can pull in reports from other sources as well as having information submitted to them. Edit: Spelling |
Why are objects in vehicle side mirrors closer than they appear? | It is because side view mirrors are [convex mirrors]. They curve outwards for you to be able to see more but because of the way the light bends around it, the depth perception is skewed. |
How do TV Show producers train infant actors and get them to react in certain ways? | I worked on A Series of Unfortunate Events with a 18 month old baby who played Sunny the youngest child. There isn’t really a scientific answer we would do anything and everything to get the reactions we wanted. We would have toys that light up, make funny sounds or have the mother call her from whatever spot we wanted... |
What is a dimple? | A dimple is what happens when one of your face muscles gets attached in the wrong spot. It's supposed to attach to the corner of your mouth, but for some reason just doesn't make it. When you smile the muscle shortens, pulling on the area it's attached to and creating an indent. |
How do fast food places like sonic have the ingredients necessary to make so many different types of foods when the building and cooking space is so small? | The raw ingredients don't take up a whole lot of space and they try to use the same ingredients for as many different things as they can to make it simpler. |
why do humans get squeamish around blood? | There is a huge difference between "humans" and "you and your friends". Start with cleaning a fish you get at the fish market, then you can move to catching them, and end up a full-fledged paleo omnivore.We identify with the creatures being killed -- it's a little too similar to *us* being killed, which sounds like a v... |
Why does it skin have trouble differentiating between cold surfaces and wet surfaces when our eyes aren't looking? | Liquids conduct heat away from your body several times faster than air. Thats why falling into a cold lake, at say 40 F will kill a LOT faster than say being exposed butt naked to 30 F air. Cold surfaces do the same thing, conduct heat away. So if you're closing your eyes, all you feel is a loss of heat, since both col... |
What is scientifically currently known to influence sexuality? | TL:DR: Scientifically, there is a LOT of debate. The answer will depend on who you ask, what you mean by "scientifically", and what you mean by "sexuality".First you have to considered the huge debate of "nature vs nurture". Specialists disagree wildly on whether sexual phenomena are innate to the individual or learned... |
Why would a software require the use of IE instead of other browsers? | Web browsers read code and displays it for you. Different web browsers are produced by different organizations and are slightly different when it comes to reading and executing code. Even something pretty universal like HTML will be read and executed in slightly different ways. Web developers can probably tell you more... |
What are the pros and cons of raising minimum wage? | let's take one scenario for example: imagine minimum wage becomes $50/hr. Macdonald's workers aren't worth that much. Between training, actual wages, and feeding them, it would probably be cheaper to use self-checkouts or machines instead. Those who keep their golden arches uniform will earn significantly more, but mos... |
The significance of today's SpaceX Launch. | Imagine if every time you flew on an airplane, they had to build a new airplane. Imagine how expensive that would make airplane tickets would be. That's how most spaceflight has been from the first rockets, through the famous Apollo moon landings, to today. The Space Shuttle was an attempt to change that, but maintenan... |
Why do the colors of a sunrise and sunset look different? | The heat from the sun cause air currents that kick up dust and haze. More stuff in the air means a more colorful sunset, while the sunrise, with cool still air, is less interesting. |
Why does music sound faster when I'm sleepy? | Really? I get the opposite! I sometimes even get sped up versions of songs just to make them sound right.Sometimes I listen to a fairly slow song, and then jump straight into a fast paced EDM song only to realise the song sounds like it's playing at a completely different tempo. Must be our brains trying to adapt to th... |
If galaxies are moving away from each other at tremendous speed, why are the Andromeda galaxy and Milky Way about to collide? | Dark Energy is expanding the universe, but the rate it expands is greater the longer the distance is. On the universal scale, Andromeda and the Milky Way are quite close together. There isn't enough distance for Dark Energy to overcome the force of gravity for now. Scientist estimate that every second, each megaparsec ... |
what's the point of a tool bring pneumatic instead of electric? | Pneumatic tools use a pressurized air line to "power" the tool instead of electricity. That's pretty much it. Isn't prone to shocking/sparks/fires, and works even if the power goes out, as long as you 've got air in the compressor tank.Mostly becuase pneumatic motors are much simpler than electric ones. All they have t... |
Why aren't Libertarians invited to participate in Presidential debates? | Because the debates are sponsored and produced by the Commision on Presidential Debates, which is co-chaired by a prominent Democrat and a prominent Republican, and requires candidates to poll at or above 15% support to join the debates. The CPD was founded in 1987 by the Democratic and Republican parties to take over ... |
Why does the internet love cats? | It's quite simple son. Cats are a common household pet so lots of people have them. You might think that there should be an equal amount of dogs, but dogs don't sit still long enough for you to take a photograph of them to upload onto the internet, whereas cats are quite nonchalant and are quite happy for you to put st... |
Why is the letter "J" pronounced in many different ways in different languages? | In Latin, j was the same letter as i, just written a little differently when multiple i's appeared in a row, . It wasn't until the Middle Ages that i and j were considered distinct letters and took on their own pronunciations. By then, Latin had split into several languages, and even non-Latin languages had adopted the... |
If we depend on wind energy, why won't it adversely affect the global atmospheric currents? | Not really. We're not removing enough energy from the wind to actually stop it. The amount of fluid energy in wind is pretty substantial. [It's like saying if we use solar panels we're removing energy from the sun. T]he energy is there, and whether we harness it or not, the energy will be spent. Granted, if there were ... |
How to 'happy tears' come about, and do they differ from 'sad tears'? | I was hoping there would be an answer on here, but there wasn't so I became curious and looked it up. Supposedly it has to do with different molecules that are in the tears. Happy and sad tears also look different under a microscope which I found very interesting. Here is the site I used incase anyone else wants to rea... |
Why do cheap cars look cheap and expensive cars look expensive? | No, there's no agreement between the carmakers, and it's not a cost-based thing. If Honda wanted, they *could* make an accord look crazy and sell it for the same price, but here's the reason: it wouldn't sell. You have to look at the market for each car company to see why the cars look like they do. Especially between ... |
why does your mind think of disgusting things when you're trying not to vomit? | "That is disgusting. You know what else is disgusting? This thing, and this and that." Our brains love connections and relationships. |
Why can't we think of a new color? | You can sort of, just not directly. Its possible to see black thats more black than possible, or orange thats more orange than orange. But for the most part, we can think of any color we want, just not ever experience it. These are because those colors are impossible. _URL_0_ If you're interested in learning more about... |
if you get a blood transfusion and your blood is found at the scene of a crime and tested, how does it effect the results? | As others have said, red blood cells have no DNA. Rather, it's other cells, such as white blood cells, that are present in blood and are the source of DNA evidence in "blood". What you may not know is that when you donate blood , that blood is filtered and separated into its constituent components. White cells, red cel... |
What happens when our muscles fail when working out? | There's a build up of toxic byproducts of the exercise that literally make your muscles unable to contract. Resting allows those byproducts to be removed/destroyed, so your muscles can function normally again. EDIT: The process is called lactic acidosis. It is brought on by a *shortage* of ATP which in turn is brought ... |
What does the sign "We don't call 9-1-1" that some home owners display outside their door mean? Are they anti-emergency services? | They are fantasizing about shooting you with their gunsThat sign usually includes an image of a handgun or rifle. The sign means that they own a weapon and will shoot at any sort of intruders instead of calling the police to handle it.I'll use an example of my neighbor and then myself. In 1992 a guy broke in to my neig... |
Why do we, as humans, keep procrastinating even though we already know we're screwing ourselves over? | Best piece of writing I 've read on this was on [Quora]. Procrastinating is the trait of a perfectionist. Putting off task out of fear that it wont be good enough once completed.I don't remember where I read this and if someone has more info on this, please don't hesitate to post it. Another reason why people procrasti... |
Why aren't the Joint Chiefs five star ranks? | Because the joint chiefs don't individually control everything. They each have control in their respective branches, but they still have to coordinate with each other. On the flip side, the president can't be expected to have the knowledge necessary to issue out advanced, detailed orders. So what do you do when you nee... |
What is happening when I need to poop, but instead I hold it until I don't need to poop anymore? | You have two spinchters one where your asshole is, and another about ~6 inches up. Most of the time that 6 inch section is empty, but when you need to poo your second spinchter opens and waste moves into that last section. If you wait and don't poo I think that your body just moves the waste back up behind the second s... |
Has a Whitehouse petition (_URL_0_) ever been successful? | The rules for the Whitehouse petitions are just that 100,000 signatures will get you a response from the administration. Usually that's just some comment on the issue or them saying "Yes, we agree, we're working on that very issue". But the President himself doesn't have too much power outside of foreign policy. He can... |
Why is spray deodorant cold when it comes out of the can? | A few reasons, first you may remember from high school chemistry the ideal gas law. PV=nRT, where P=pressure, V=volume, n= number of moles, R is a constant and T is temperature. If you spray a pressurized gas , which is typically butane or propane, as the gas comes out of the spray nozzle it's pressure decreases as the... |
Violence is more widely accepted in American media while sex is not. (ELI5) Why is this not the case in the UK? | There is a puritanical tradition in America dating back to the Puritans. The Victorian era in England was similar, only that was due to the Queen's directives, whereas in America, there is a long standing religious undercurrent which has informed the culture. Even today, there is a supermajority of religious Americans.... |
How do .zip files work? I can download a .zip and extract a file that's twice as large from it. What are they cutting out? | They aren't cutting anything out, they're just writing it in a way that doesn't take as much space. There's a good explaination here: _URL_0_", '> What are they cutting out? Repeated patterns. Essentially, .zip files work by finding large, multiply-repeated patterns of data, and placing that pattern into a "dictionary"... |
How can some fabrics and materials stretch and tighten again? E.G Rubber bands, underwear, etc | Rubber is maybe a nice example to explain how this happens. This is ELI5, so it's not going to be very precise, but the main idea is there. If we only consider what happens in the small strain, we can really describe it all just in terms of entropy from a statistical mechanics perspective. Entropy is essentially disord... |
Why is the Bluebottle Jellyfish aka the Portuguese Man-of-War considered a colony of cellular individuals? Why aren't humans a colony of specialized cells? | Well because of the cnidarian life cycle. Cniderea is the family corals and jellyfish are in. In most members of the family there is the polyp stage and the jellyfish stage. Some species spend their whole lives in one stage like coral, or most of their lives in another like jellyfish. In a syphonophore there are polyps... |
Why do clarinets overblow at the 12th, but saxophones overblow at the octave? | The bore shape is part of the issue, but the other part is that the clarinet is *closed at one end*. Any tube is going to produce harmonics: the fundamental is the first harmonic, the octave at the second harmonic, the 12th at the third harmonic, and so on. An ideal closed cylindrical bore doesn't produce even-numbered... |
the recent Planned Parenthood video(s) controversy | A political group is putting out a series of videos that are set up to provoke strong emotion, and people are reacting to them. "Planned Parenthood sells dead babies!" is a very snappy headline, but the reality of it is closer to "Planned Parenthood is one of many organizations that donates otherwise useless tissue to ... |
Why are unrestrained animals in vehicle cabins not covered under any existing "distracted driving" laws? | > But no existing "distracted driving" laws even mention animals or pets. This is false. Hawaii Statutes, Section 291C-124, : “While operating a motor vehicle, no person shall hold in the person’s lap, or allow to be in the driver’s immediate area, any person, animal, or object which interferes with the driver’s contro... |
What exactly are laminar and turbulent flows and how are they utilized by swimmers? | The swimmer doesn't control the pool, of course, they only control their body. The water in the pool isn't flowing, if you take the people out it becomes quite still. Rather, the swimmer is moving through the water, and water is flowing around their body. Good technique tries to keep that flow laminar, watch particular... |
How do they design cologne? As opposed to scents for females i.e fruits, flowers etc. | The process of making them is the same as for women's perfume, but if you're asking about the difference in the scent, it's really just the use of different fragrance extracts with different "notes". Colognes for men are generally designed to have a clean, office-friendly note using the "oceanic" ozone-type scent or th... |
Why are galaxies planar and haven't been crushed into spheres by their own gravity, like other space objects of sufficient mass? | Because they rotate. Angular momentum spins them into a disk orbiting the supermassive black holes in their center. It is the same reason solar systems do not all collapse into their starBecause they are spinning. Because a lot of this stuff had velocity not dirrectly in line with the center of gravity, it orbits inste... |
How can 'New Horizons' send home detailed pictures from Pluto when we don't even have a stable Internet connection everywhere on Earth? | New Horizons doesn't use the same network as the internet. There is a series of large radio telescopes around our planet known as the [Deep Space Network], which are used for the purpose of communicating with probes a long distance from earth. Given the distance of New Horizons, it has line of site to almost half of ea... |
why does a phones signal interfere with landing and take off of aircraft? | If you have a phone that does not meet the regulations for electromagnetic emissions, there is a fault with the airplanes avionics, there is a slight possibility that your phone might have a slight impact on one of the several redundant systems the pilots use to navigate. In other words they don't. The primary reason y... |
Why are crab legs so expensive? (as compared to other seafood) | Because crab fishing is extremely dangerous. A lot of people are hurt or killed on crab boats, which means captains have to pay a ton of money to get people to crew their boats. The cost is passed down to the customer |
How can King trademark words like candy and saga, and what is to stop me from grabbing a dictionary and starting with A? | Trademarks only cover uses that you can show could cause confusion to a consumer. So you can have Apple Computers and Apple Apple Company, and neither is infringing on the others' trademark.To be fair, they're only trademarking them in regards to video games. You 'd have to show that you're using the word in a particul... |
Why does my camera take rectangular photos (horizontal vs. vertical orientation) even though the lens is circular? | So many answers. Here are some: - First off, there are cameras which take square pictures. But most don't.- Movies are rectangular because they want to show multiple people side-by-side. Since movies are an important source of pictures, it makes sense to have rectangular photos too.- Most analog cameras were 35 mm came... |
In C#, what is an instance of an object and why must you create one? | Try using this metaphor: A 'class' is like a blueprint. A blueprint 'outlines' a house, and tells you how to build the house and what features the house should have. In the same way a 'class' describes the features an 'object' will have. Specifically, a class tells you the properties an object has, and the actions the ... |
Why does my urine smell like Spaghetti-o's after I eat them? | I don't know about Spaghetti-o's, but when I eat Sugar Crisp cereal, my urine'll smell like it a few hours later. |
How can people in submarines stay underwater for so long? With a full crew, wouldn't they run out of oxygen? | I was a nuclear operator on a 688 class submarine for many years. In order to produce oxygen we remove all impurities from water. We then subject the water to high voltage DC. The water molecules split into their component atoms . This process is called electrolysis. Additionally we have emergency "candles" similar to ... |
How do Indian Reservations work? | Indian reservation - Wikipedia_URL_0_An Indian reservation is a legal designation for an area of land managed by a federally recognized Native American tribe under the US Bureau of Indian Affairs rather than the state governments of the United States in which they are physically located. |
why do french fries, tater-tots, or any other deep fried potato food taste different after being left out or put in the refrigerator? | Frying in oil produces a crispy texture because it has a high boiling point. Unlike potato chips, fries and tater tots aren't cooked to the point of driving all moisture out. They retain some moisture. As soon as you take them out of the fryer the moisture starts to affect the texture of the food. The longer you wait t... |
How does electrolysis work?+ What are its uses in the real world? | How it works is not quite eli5. Two rods are put into a substance. By having a current go through the rods and through the substance, individual molecules from the substance can be separated. I suggest looking up YouTube videos for more information. In real life it helps purify substances, things that we don't usually ... |
How thermal camera works. | Let's put it like this: everything around you with a temperature over 0°K radiates a wide spectrum of "light".The hotter the observed object is, the shorter is the wavelenght of that light. So our sun has a temperature of around 6000°C - so it radiates yellow light. If you heat iron to around 800°C it starts glowing re... |
Why do drinks taste better in glass bottles compared to plastic containers? | Part of it the taste from just what your mouth comes into contact. Glass will be colder than plastic, and glass and metal generally have less of a taste that plastic. Anothing thing to consider is the difference between drinking from a bottle and a glass. With a glass, your nose is better exposed to the drink, thus you... |
How do gills work, and why can't fish survive on land very long? | Both lungs and gills have thin surfaces that red blood cells can get close to to absorb oxygen. Gills are designed to pump water through so those cells can pick up dissolved oxygen in the water while releasing carbon dioxide, while lungs do the same, but with air. Fish can't survive outside the water because the gills ... |
Why do we write 3 dots after unfinished sentences? Why not 2 or 4? | I think it's just that 2 dots seems like a typo, and 4 is just excessive.3 dots gets the point across.The ellipsis was originally used to indicate a word being left out of a sentence, or an intentional blank. This could be to indicate an unspecified proper name or other noun , or to indicate an expletive, similar to ho... |
why do I get crippling foot cramps after I ejaculate during sex? | Maybe you are partially kneeling in missionary position and overtaxing the muscles in your foot/feet by keeping them extended. Try raising your partner on a pillow so that you can position your feet differently. Failing that, try cowgirl. |
Genetically, how does a red head baby come to be? | There are dominant and recessive genes . Each person has two copies of a gene, one from each parent. If a gene is dominant, even if there is a recessive gene, the dominant gene is the one that determines physical traits . If a gene is recessive, you need two copies of the recessive gene, because Rr results in the domin... |
Why were timers in NES games so fast? | It's because they weren't seconds, they were ticks. A tick, usually used in video games and not as a unit of time, is about how long it would take to say the word tick. A tick is used to time something, like in a shooter, the rate of fire for a specific gun wouldn't be logged as x bullets per second, but would x.xx tic... |
How come places like Spain are +1 GMT when most of it is relatively behind the Greenwich Meridian Line as far as rotation is concerned? | The Nazis. That's actually the reason. When they invaded France, they switched it to the same timezone as Germany. After the war, the French didn't change it back. Spain was neutral in WW2, but the ruling regime was on mostly good terms with Germany, so they also decided to align their timezone. |
How do black hat hackers make money? | All the criminals that honestly think choosing a life of crime is "easy" only end up in one place: jail. All the good criminals are just as hard working as any CEO or any other honest job you can think of. The only difference between criminals and average people is that criminals are probably more aware that their acti... |
Why do some 12V adaptors have chunky brick plugs that block power strips while others are thin and fit so nicely? | Two different technologies, their use being dictated by cost. The heavier "brick like" power supplies employ a simple iron-core wire-wound step-down transformer. They are cheap and long-lasting, but they are also bulky and heavy. The slimmer, lighter-weight packages are examples of switch-mode power supplies, which are... |
What is that reverberating sound you hear when moving your eyes and eyelids in the right way? | You definitely are not the only one experiencing this, I for one can do it as well. Since it takes sustained effort to do, I'd say it's probably has to do with some muscles fairly close to your inner ear contracting.However, that's only a guess. I really only chimed in to let you know this is normal and healthy . |
How does seasoning cast iron work? | Oils that are best for seasoning will form longer carbon chains when heated in the presence of oxygen . Heating the iron expands the pan creating tiny pores in the iron that cause the oil to stick to the pan. So seasoning a cast iron pan creates an oil coating over the iron that greatly reduces the friction of the pan.... |
Am I supposed to pop pimples/infections? | No. All you're doing is bypassing the protective barrier of the skin and creating an opportunity for more bacteria to get in. |
Why does failure demotivate and succes motivate? | If you try something and fail, there will be temptation to simply stop and give up. If you succeed however, there's no reason to stop. Instead, you will naturally want to continue to succeed. |
Why are most pills without protective film bitter? | Other people are saying its done on purpose for safety reasons. I can't find any evidence of this. The active ingredient and most excipients in a pill already taste really bad. Companies don't care to mask this taste for adults because its not needed to get most adults to take the pills. Also if you take the whole pill... |
Why do babies probingly scream and make loud noises around others, while for other species it'd probably mean death? | We are a social species and our ancestors were too. Our babies were never left alone. In many other species, it is important that the babies stay quiet because they are sometimes left unattended and must hide. . That was never the case for humans. Like chimpanzees, we would've literally carried our young around for yea... |
Why do some people put directories into .tar files before compressing them via gzip (.gz)? Why not simply compress the directories directly? | errr I might be missing something but because you can't gzip a directory, only a file? $ mkdir foo $ gzip foo gzip: foo is a directory -- ignored So you use tar to make a directory into a file which you can gzip. Of course you could make a file compression program that does both at once, like ZIP does, but the unix way... |
What would happen if you tried to land on a small Gas planet? | We don't really know the inner structures of gas giants, but they're thought to have solid or liquid cores. Usually, this would be any inner core of heavy elements and an outer core of liquid metallic hydrogen, but the behaviour of matter at those temperatures and pressures isn't really known. They're not all gas all t... |
Why do television ads for medicine and drugs always say to look at their magazine ads? | The fine print. You can only say so much on television, and the screens are only so big to display text. there are a TON of legal disclaimers in the fine print as well as side effects and the like, all of which is information you'd want to know before putting a random drug in your body. Usually the text will take up th... |
How my Phone knows when im using the knuckles instead of fingers? | This is speculation, since I can't find any 'how this works' detail from a bunch of googling: When you touch the screen with a fingertip, it's 'squishier' than touching it with a knuckle. There's more surface area in contact with it, and it doesn't bump the phone as suddenly. So the phone tells the difference between t... |
Why do some cats start going nuts and biting you after you pet them for too long? | they get scared to let anybody in emotionally because they have been hurt before', "My short explanation: they want to play with you as though you were another cat. It's what they know. |
Why and how did the big bang happen? | We don't know. We don't know if it was caused. If it was caused, we don't know what caused it. If it wasn't caused, we don't know how it happened. We don't even know if there's any sense in which "where did it come from" or "what came before it" make sense, and if they do make sense we don't know the answers.We don't k... |
How does general anesthesia work? Why is it so fast? | There are many kinds of general anesthesia. Broadly speaking, a drug can be used as a general anesthetic if it causes unconsciousness but doesn't kill you. Typically a general anesthetic causes unconsciousness that is at least somewhat resistant to stimulation, i.e. it knocks you out enough that being cut by a surgeon ... |
Why is it that we don't tend to recall the things surrounding our tv or screens when we watched them? | The human brain has evolved to only pay attention to changes in nearby environment and ignore anything that doesn't change. This is from our ancestors' need to look out for food/prey, danger, rivals, etc. We ignore stuff that doesn't move because it doesn't pose a threat to us, and our brains don't care about anything ... |
what is preventing mold to grow on food before it's expiration date? | nothing at all, there is already mold and bacteria on all your food before you ever buy it, but depending on the food and the storage conditions how long it takes to grow enough mold that you can see it or enough that it is dangerous will vary. |
How insects are preserved in Amber and how we’re able to tell how old they are | Amber is tree resin, it was liquid and sticky when it came out of the tree so all sorts of stuff got stuck in it fairly often. And since it's a carbon compound from a tree it can be radioisotope dated, some part of carbon in trees is always radioactive carbon-14 coming from the air where it's created by cosmic rays. On... |
How does going free-to-play save some games? | For a lot of MMOs, a large part of the game is there being people there: WoW as a single player game would suck royally. Which means that if the game switches from a subscription-based model to a free-to-play model, it can bring a lot of people back into the game who left because it wasn't worth it to pay to play, but ... |
Does the weight of something change as you cook it? For example, does 4oz of raw chicken = 4oz of cooked chicken? | Meat usually loses weight - that's why when you go to a burger restaurant and they list the weight, it'll say "pre-cooked weight" or something like that in the small print. ie_URL_0_ > The Quarter Pounder is a hamburger product sold by international fast food chain McDonald's, so named for containing a patty with a pre... |
what is a communist? | A communist is someone who thinks there shouldn't be any money, any classes, and all people should have same rights and have access to same benefits, regardless of anything. People work together and share everything |
Why are there spiders in EVERY. DAMN. RPG. EVER.? | I demand that you go look at pictures of cute jumping spiders and purge yourself of this bigotryFor the same reason that every. damn. rpg. also has lava, caves, and swamps. I guess it's part of the stereotypical tropes of high- and low-fantasy settings. If I were to think of actual reasons off the top of my head, I wou... |
Why are under cover police cars still Ford Crown Victorias? Wouldn't something like a Subaru Outback be less conspicuous? | There are different levels of undercover. The police interceptor Crown Victorias are *unmarked* cars, but at a glance are still clearly police cars. Many departments also have *undercover* cars that can be any make and model, but may not perform police duty as well as the specialized police interceptor cars can.Maybe t... |
How do limes "cook" the meat while making carne apache? | Okay so this is a condensed explanation of what I read in "On Food and Cooking." Awesome book, BTW. Basically lime juice is acidic. What that means is there are lots of H+ ions floating around. These ions, as it turns out are very reactive. Remember that in chemistry, most reactions revolve around trading, trapping, or... |
why have cats evolved to wash themselves but dogs have not? | I assume it comes from their different social and hunting styles. Dogs evolved from pack animals . They also used to hunt in groups, raiding/surrounding their prey instead of sneaking upon them, or scavenging already dead carcasses; in both cases, being inconspicuous doesn't matter much. Cats are of the lonelier/indepe... |
How can the heat from concert pyrotechnics be felt instantly from so far away? | Heat not only travels by convection but by radiation. Heat sources emit Infrared light which is absorbed by matter and turned into heat. That travels at the speed of light. The air will be about the same temperature around you because it isn't absorbing the IR light. Generally pyrotechnics are short lived and aimed awa... |
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